Talk:2537: Painbow Award

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 01:19, 4 November 2021 by 172.70.85.249 (talk)
Jump to: navigation, search

LOL 127.0.0.1 19:49, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

f!rst p0st 172.69.170.53 19:50, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Mein gott, this color palette IS actually painful to look at. 172.70.178.161 20:02, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

The caption has changed since the image was captured ("color gradient" changed to "color scale"), we need to pull the new comic. Barmar (talk) 20:08, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I updated the file, although the changes haven't taken effect yet. theusaf (talk) 20:37, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Does anyone know what Lambda is often used for in physics (or other sciences) as it relates to Theta, where Theta is phase? 127.0.0.1 20:48, 3 November 2021 (UTC).

I'm surprised YOU don't know. Wavelength. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:38, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
Why are you talking to yourself? 127.0.0.1 21:07, 3 November 2021 (UTC).
Wouldn't that make this chart self-referential, in that each color output at any particular x,y coordinate can somehow be measured in terms of wavelength and phasing (red shift)? 127.0.0.1 21:17, 3 November 2021 (UTC).
I think you're responding to my comment (it seems to be above it, though?). Not sure exactly what you mean by self-referential either, but I suppose somewhat. Assuming this is a black body curve, the emission spectra has a peak at the point where the graph shows "peak" intensity; this wavelength is based off the temperature of the black body itself (see Wien's displacement law), whilst the redshift is based on the relative velocity of an observer & the black body (i.e. a star, usually).--Sapphirejulia (talk) 23:28, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
If I had to guess (as an "armchair" astronomer), it seems to be similar to that of a black body (Planck curve) but also showing the phase. A phase shift to me means change in wavelength, i.e. Delta lambda / lambda, but that's normally denoted by the z-parameter (see Wikipedia's redshift article). There's also a phase angle listed under astronomy on Wikipedia, which could relate but never heard of it before. --Sapphirejulia (talk) 23:28, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Scientific publications aren't the only contenders for the award. I see a Painbow during almost every TV weather report. Captured an image of one of them, hope it displays correctly.

Painbow used by a TV weather forecast

JohnB (talk) 22:20, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

This subreddit has a lot of these scales: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisugly Fabian42 (talk) 00:03, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

When I'm developing a continuum of colours on a scale (or scale-like) system I tend to try one of two things:

  • Hue-based angle, going from one hue-angle to another hue-angle (usually normalised for fullest saturation) at no more than ⅚ths of a rotation between, to keep maximum looking too like minimum, and choosing the endpoints and via-point to be meaningful (e.g. red to green via blue, or magenta to yellow via cyan - whatever best works).
  • A series of connected straight-lines through the RGB colour-cube, without too much criss-crossings, again with meaning. I'll make that more complex if necessary, e.g. for eightmap of the Earth, deepest depth #000 (or #002ish, maybe) to #0FF at the minimum depth, linearly #0(n)(n) for n inversely normalised to depth; quickly use #0FF->#FF8->#0F0 across the intertidal range; then from lowest elevations to highest #0F0 shades to something like #A50 (or maybe a grey) then onward to #FFF for the top. All done with simple gradient-based formulae linking height(/depth) directly to whatever changing component there is.

...though I don't usually thing about dichromatic vision (let alone monochromatic), in either case, so I may indeed make things difficult for some people. 172.70.85.249 01:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)